Protection of consumers online

The number of consumers purchasing goods and services online including digital ones increased from 2.14 billion to 2.71 billion over 2021-2024. Around 20.1% of retail sales are¹ made online. In the EU in 2023, 70% of 16-74 year-olds purchased goods and services² online. Questions arise about the safety of goods and services purchased online.

The EU experience

As of December 2024, the EU Regulation 2023/988 on common product safety³ requirements for digital and remotely marketed products and platforms selling such products has been in force. Any products are covered, except those subject to special regulation such as medicines.

Cybersecurity has been added to the list of features by which product safety is assessed. Thus, a digital product (such as a computer program or mobile application) cannot be considered safe and sold on platforms if it is not protected from malicious interference in its operation by third parties or may harm the health of users (e.g., drug advertisements in computer games).

Products producers and importers are obligated to inform platforms about:

1) Any product safety issues (e.g., the product can emit harmful substances when heated).

2) The results of investigations into incidents and consumer complaints regarding the safety of imported products (e.g. when a non-EU purchaser of utensils complained about their release of harmful substances during cooking). The Regulation requires online sales offers for a product to contain information on its safety in a consumer-friendly manner.

Platforms, on the other hand, are obligated:

1) To ensure direct communication on product safety issues with supervisory authorities and consumers and process reports from them within 2-3 working days.

2) To regularly monitor products placed on the site using information from the Safety⁴ Gate Portal platform created by the European Commission, to take voluntary measures to block/remove content related to the offer of unsafe products and to inform the supervisory authorities about them in accordance with the orders of the supervisory authorities.

3) To restrict access to vendors who repeatedly offer unsafe products.

4) To notify consumers who have purchased a product on the site that has been withdrawn from the marketplace due to unsafety.

Russia’s experience

In Russia, the Law on Consumer Rights Protection (Article 7) establishes the consumer's right to safety of goods and services, but the requirements to ensure it are specified only for food products. There is no special regulation for goods purchased online, including digital⁵ products. At the same time, the owner of an aggregator that has provided the consumer with inaccurate/incomplete information about the product/service is not liable to the consumer if it does not change the information provided by the seller (clause 2.1 of Article 12).

Also, Russia does not participate in international systems of information exchange on unsafe goods, such as the OECD Global⁶ Recalls system.

From the monitoring issue No. 12, December 2024. Download the full issue (PDF) · issue page at the Gaidar Institute